Calling in sick to work? Outrageous!

We’ve all pulled a sickie at least once – whether to go to an event, keep an appointment, or simply avoid a day at work – and there’s no point in pretending otherwise, but some of us clearly need to work on our excuses.

Mischievous teenagers aren’t the only ones playing hooky. According to a new CareerBuilder survey, 32% of professional adults called in sick when they weren’t actually ill at least once this year. But instead of simply telling their managers, “I can’t make it in today because I’m not feeling well,” they offered much more colorful excuses.

“Hi maam, I can’t do my shift next week because I’m going fishing with my friends because it’s a wonderful season.”

While that may sound like a completely ridiculous excuse, the employee on the phone actually tried to justify this as a reason to skip work, driving his manager mad and testing her patience. Some people make extremely ridiculous excuses because they just “didn’t feel like going in,” while others “wanted the day to relax” or “needed to catch up on sleep.”

This video demonstrates one of the many silly excuses given by people to skip work. Can you believe that the most ridiculous excuse given by a worker was that he broke his arm trying to grab a falling sandwich? And while we stress that these are not proven lies, they certainly sound deeply suspicious. (sense the sarcasm?)

So beware: Just because you’ve come up with a creative excuse doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. No fewer than 16% of employers say they’ve fired a worker for giving a phony excuse. Scrap the imagination and come up with logical excuses if you want to secure your job.